Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to conveying apparatuses for conveying articles that may be received one by one, to a processing apparatus, such as a packaging machine, located on a downstream side of the conveying apparatus.
A technique has been known to use a conveyer that relies on linear movement for conveying articles one after another from an upstream-side apparatus, such as a manufacturing apparatus, to a conveyer of a downstream-side apparatus, such as a packaging machine. For example, JP-A-2015-525176 (also published as US2015/0136564) discloses a conveying apparatus including pushing members supported by travelers that are mutually independently driven such that each traveler travels along a loop-shaped path. The pushing members may push and feed the articles one after another such that the articles are slid along a conveying plane toward a conveyor of a packaging machine located on the downstream side of the conveying apparatus.
With the conveying apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2015-525176, the traveling speed of each of the travelers may be increased or decreased to match the timing at which the articles delivered one after another with the conveyer located on the downstream side. However, if the travelling speed of the traveler is decreased while the pushing member supported by the traveler is engaging the article, the article may move forwardly away from the pushing member and corresponding traveler by the inertia force. In such a scenario, the articles arriving one after another at the conveying apparatus, with the possible exception of the article at the leading positon (i.e., the leading article), may abut the immediately preceding pushing members, which may sufficiently restrict their positions to ensure any deviations from proper timing for feeding the articles to the conveyor on the downstream side may be within a tolerable range. However, because there is no preceding pushing member for the leading article, the leading article may move forwardly away from the corresponding pushing member and corresponding traveler by a large distance when the travelling speed of the corresponding traveler is decreased. Consequently, the leading article may be fed to the downstream side conveyor at improper timing that deviates from the proper timing outside the tolerable range. For example, if the packaging machine having the downstream side conveyor is a horizontal form-fill-seal packaging machine, a problem may arise when a crosswise seal device engages (interferes with) the leading article when the crosswise seal device forms a crosswise seal on a tubular formed film along a direction intersecting a feeding direction of the film.
Therefore, there has been a need in the art for conveying apparatuses that include pushing members movable independently of each other and that can feed articles one after another at suitable timing that matches to process timing of a processing machine located on a downstream side of the conveying apparatus.